Minutes of the Business Meeting
International Dreiser Society, ALA
Baltimore, 28 May 1999
New officers for the Dreiser Society, beginning
two-year terms as of June 1st, are James L. W. West III, president,
and Thomas P. Riggio, vice president. Paul Orlov continues as
treasurer; Christopher Weinmann has been elected recording
secretary. Steve Brennan and Jim Hutchisson continue as directors at
large.
Paul reported that we have approximately $3,000 in our treasury. The
new officers will organize an process by which graduate students
working on Dreiser might apply for funds to help them attend Dreiser
events.
The meeting began with congratulations to Clare Eby and Nancy
Barrineau for their excellent work as editor and book-review editor
of DREISER STUDIES. They have ended their terms; the new co-editors
are Keith Newlin and Steve Brennan. Keith and Steve will handle the
assignment of book reviews themselves for the present; they will
also address the question of the composition of the editorial board,
and of staggered terms for board members.
Jim West distributed a flyer describing plans for the upcoming
SISTER CARRIE CENTENARY at Penn, 9-11 November 2000. An announcement
of the event was posted not long ago on this listserv. The only
update is that Joseph Epstein, who recently retired as editor of THE
AMERICAN SCHOLAR, and who is a longtime Dreiser critic and advocate,
has agreed to give the opening lecture on the 9th, this to be
followed by the opening of a SISTER CARRIE exhibit and by a
reception.
Members present made some excellent suggestions for events at the
Centenary, including a serial reading of the entire text of SISTER
CARRIE (rather as was done in St. Paul for THE GREAT GATSBY on
Fitzgerald's 100th birthday); a session in which passages of CARRIE
are read in other languages, including German, Japanese, Russian,
and Chinese--with commentary on how Dreiser's writing is rendered
into these languages; and a session on different teaching approaches
to the novel. Members agreed that it would be a good idea to keep
the sessions non-academic in tone and accessible to lay folk from
the Philadelphia area.
The death of Neda Westlake was noted with great sadness. Neda was
instrumental in bringing Dreiser's papers to Penn and in fostering
much excellent scholarship based on them. Plans are under way for a
session at the Centenary to be devoted to reminiscences of Neda by
various of us who worked in the collections at Penn over the years.
Calls for papers for both the Centenary celebration, and for next
year's ALA conference, will be issued by the vice president this
summer or early in the fall.
James L. W. West III
President |